D-Day and The Battle of Stalingrad were two battles in the Second World War II that changed the tides of the war towards the Allies both on the Eastern and Western Front. Before the winter of 1942-43, when the battle at Stalingrad took place, the German forces on the Eastern front were at a stand still in the Northern Soviet Union only miles outside of Moscow, and advancing southward towards the Caucasus Mountain Range in order to obtain the Soviet fuel supply. Before the summer of 1944, when the Battle for Normandy took place, the German had occupied all of France and were waiting for the Allies behind the fortified coast along the English Channel, also known as the Atlantic Wall. Both of these pivotal battles proved to be the beginning of the end for German forces on each front. .
Stalingrad was not an ultimate goal of the German Forces in 1942. Their goal was to push southward into the Caucasus Mountains to occupy the oil fields and fuel depots that was the lifeline of Soviet mobilization. If this objective were taken it would freeze the Soviet counter-attack exposing its flanks to Germany's freshly fueled troops, and it would render Soviet troops protecting Moscow incredibly vulnerable. Hitler also wanted to push into the Urals, the industrial heart of the Soviet Army. However, in order to gain access to the Urals, the Germans had to control Stalingrad, the largest city on the River Volga which served as the protective barrier.
Soviet forces in Stalingrad, at first, were normal, but as the German attack became more intense, the Soviets, under general Zhukov, were facing defeat. Quickly, they gathered over a million reinforcements from Moscow where there was not much action. This newly developed fighting force rivaled any in the world and the Germans were about to find out how much more powerful the Soviets had just become. German forces consisted of over 100,000 troops fighting in Stalingrad.
